SOA-C02 Networking and Content Delivery Practice Question
A SysOps administrator needs to route traffic for a domain name 'example.com' to an Application Load Balancer. Which AWS service should be used to create the DNS record?
⚠ Common exam trap
SOA-C02 often tests service boundaries — candidates may pick the ALB itself or CloudFront, but DNS record creation always belongs to Route 53.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Amazon Route 53
Amazon Route 53 is AWS's DNS service and is used to create DNS records such as A or alias records that point a domain like example.com to an Application Load Balancer's DNS name. It supports alias records that map directly to ALB endpoints, enabling health checks and failover.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
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Amazon EC2
Why it's wrong here
Amazon EC2 is an infrastructure-as-a-service offering that provides resizable virtual servers, not a DNS hosting or domain routing service. Although it is technically possible to install and run BIND DNS server software on an EC2 instance, this requires you to manually patch, scale, and ensure availability of the instance. Route 53 is the managed, native AWS service designed for creating and maintaining DNS records, so EC2 is not the correct choice for this requirement.
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Application Load Balancer
Why it's wrong here
An Application Load Balancer operates at Layer 7 and distributes HTTP/HTTPS traffic to targets like EC2 instances or Lambda functions, but it has no capability to act as an authoritative DNS server. The ALB exposes a DNS name that clients must resolve, but the mapping from your custom domain to that DNS name must be created in a DNS service such as Route 53 using a CNAME or an ALIAS record. Thus, the ALB depends on DNS rather than providing it, making it incorrect for domain traffic routing.
- ✓
Amazon Route 53
Why this is correct
Amazon Route 53 is the highly available and scalable Domain Name System (DNS) web service in AWS, designed specifically for domain registration, health checking, and authoritative DNS record management. It supports A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, and AWS-specific ALIAS records, and offers distinct routing policies such as latency-based, geolocation, weighted, and failover routing. With its global network of DNS servers, Route 53 can answer queries to route users to the appropriate application endpoints, fulfilling the exact need of a SysOps administrator who must route traffic for a domain.
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Amazon CloudFront
Why it's wrong here
Amazon CloudFront is a global content delivery network (CDN) that accelerates static and dynamic content by caching it at edge locations, but it is not an authoritative DNS service and does not hold zone files or DNS records. While CloudFront distributions receive a domain name like d123.cloudfront.net, you need a separate DNS provider to map your own domain to that distribution domain. CloudFront handles content delivery and TLS termination at the edge, not declaration or routing of domain records, so it cannot be used to route traffic for a domain at the DNS level.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Amazon Web Services exam blueprint
This SOA-C02 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the SOA-C02 exam.